


Flares

by enigma731



Series: Roads I Used to Run [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Christmas, Clint Feels, Developing Relationship, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-25
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-03 11:30:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2849345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enigma731/pseuds/enigma731
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint disappears ten days before Christmas, as Tony’s robots are finishing off the mess from the unnecessarily large, raucous party he’s thrown.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flares

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Our Last Days](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2541908) by [enigma731](https://archiveofourown.org/users/enigma731/pseuds/enigma731). 



> WARNINGS: None really, but there is discussion of canonical Barton family issues, so if that’s going to hit too close to home this time of year, you might want to skip this one.
> 
> NOTES: A Christmas vignette, to give you some Clint feels for the holidays. This will be more meaningful if you read Our Last Days first, but that’s optional. Fair warning: I set out to write fluff and it took a sharp turn into emotional hurt/comfort land, with a healthy dose of angst. Many thanks to [mahenry424](http://archiveofourown.org/users/mahenry424/pseuds/mahenry424) without whom I would be constantly lost.

_But did you see the flares in the sky?_  
_Were you blinded by the light?_  
_Did you feel the smoke in your eyes?_  
_Did you? Did you?_  
_Did you see the sparks filled with hope? You are not alone_  
_Cause someone's out there, sending out flares_  
([x](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WHb4Hf7fbE))

Clint disappears ten days before Christmas, as Tony’s robots are finishing off the mess from the unnecessarily large, raucous party he’s thrown. Natasha guesses that the next order of business will be having the Tower decked out in even more ridiculously gaudy Christmas decorations, though she’s learned in the few months since she moved in that interfering in those sorts of decisions is always a bad idea.

She gives Clint a week, because he’s always needed his space, just like she has. They’ve always respected that about one another. When he doesn’t return, though, doesn’t give her any sign or contact, she decides it’s time to go after him, that maybe that’s what he’s wanted all along.

Clint still has boltholes all over the world, a handful of safe places they’re both reasonably certain S.H.I.E.L.D. never knew about. There’s no question in her mind now, though, only one place she intends to look for him.

* * *

Covered in a few inches of snow, the sun just dipping below the horizon, the farm manages to look almost festive. The old land looks a bit less barren, the buildings a little less dilapidated, though she can’t tell whether that’s all a trick of the eye, nothing more than wishful thinking.

The lights inside the house are turned on, for which Natasha is grateful after hiking the last several miles in the cold. She doesn’t waste any time in climbing the icy steps to the porch and knocking, though she has a key of her own now, could come and go without any sort of permission.

“You here to sing me some carols?” asks Clint, when he opens the door. He looks tired, she thinks, and a part of her wishes she’d come sooner.

“No,” says Natasha, stepping in around him so that their shoulders brush. “Too cold for that.”

“Says the woman from the Russian tundra,” he points out, the ghost of the smile she’s been hoping to see playing at the corners of his lips.

“Exactly,” she insists, keeping up the forced cheeriness because she isn’t ready to break the surface yet, needs to get a better feel for what’s actually going on here first. “Which means that you should close the door and make us something warm to drink.”

* * *

The first thing she notices is that the house is much emptier, the cobwebs and the clutter cleared out, probably an attempt to banish at least a few ghosts of the past. She isn’t sure it’s been very successful, though; if anything, the place feels sadder now, draftier, like an old carcass of a building with nothing left but the pearl-white bones.

There’s no trace of any sort of decorations or holiday cheer, which Natasha expected, even as it makes her heart sink. She’s never been big on Christmas; the only traditions she’s ever observed were the ones that have left her with so much to atone for. Still, she’s accustomed to Clint milking the celebration for all its worth, something almost manic about his insistence that she avail herself of all the movie classics (at least in his opinion), his perpetually tangled strands of lights, his trees that have turned out lopsided year after year, all dying a slow thirsty death in his apartment during the month after Christmas.

“So,” she asks, after she’s dumped her bag in the upstairs bedroom she’s become accustomed to using here, “you were waiting for me to get here before you started celebrating, right?” It’s a lie and they both know it.

Clint looks up from his place at the stove, where he’s stirring a pan of what she thinks might be actual milk and cocoa. “Definitely.” He doesn’t meet her eyes, instead moves to grab two mugs from one of the cabinets, which is conspicuously less dusty than it was during the summer.

“You know,” she says carefully, just barely starting a ripple at the surface, “Tony’s big on Christmas too. I bet he’d be all about a team bonding holiday movie marathon.”

Clint’s hand is perfectly steady as he pours the mixture from the pan into the mugs, but she doesn’t miss the way his breathing becomes a bit heavier, almost resigned to this.

“Who needs that when I’ve got you here?” he asks, setting the cocoa on the table in front of her, a little sloshing over the rim of the mug, belying the calm of his movements.

“Fair point,” says Natasha, though the look she gives him says that she isn’t anywhere near ready to concede.

* * *

She isn’t expecting the three giant boxes full of decorations Clint produces from the attic. The cardboard is old, the labels faded, some corners bashed in and others darkened by dampness and mold. There’s a musty smell to the whole bunch, but Clint looks so determined that she doesn’t ask any questions for once.

Out of the first box he produces an ancient-looking artificial tree, the backbone sitting crooked in the base. The branches don’t look like anything that would ever be found in nature, twisted crooks of wire that shed fake pine needles by the dozen and smell like old cigarette smoke.

“Looks just like your usual,” says Natasha, when they’ve finished putting the thing together. It stands six feet tall, a shambles of plastic needles, leaning precariously toward the left wall of the room.

Clint snorts a hollow laugh and opens the next box, which is filled with gold garland. “Just wait until you see this thing in all its glory.” He tosses one end of the garland to her and begins wrapping the other around the tree. The tinsel is old and brittle, and seems determined to invade more of the house than the stray needles from the tree already have.

“I don’t know if I can stand the excitement,” she deadpans, though she can’t seem to manage her usual level of cynicism toward his holiday rituals, not when everything around her seems so fragile.

Clint finishes with the garland and opens up the final box, the smallest of the three. This one houses an assortment of ornaments, though they seem to have been put away with great haste or little care, jumbled together, broken pieces strewn in here and there. He sucks in a breath at the sight, and Natasha feels something twist in her own chest, a pang of sadness for the wreckage he clearly hasn’t expected to find.

“Your family’s,” she says softly, and it isn’t a question. She takes a step closer, rests her palm against his back, feeling the way his shoulders shake.

“Yeah,” says Clint, pulling a crocheted gingerbread man out of the box and holding it out by the string. “My mom made this one. I think.” He hangs it on the tree halfheartedly.

When he moves, Natasha stoops to pick out an ornament of her own, but she stops short, the atmosphere of these things far too intimate, too steeped in the kind of pain that she can only imagine.

“Did she make all of these?” she asks instead, watching as Clint retrieves a few more--a snowman made out of cotton balls, a yellow felt star, a clay candy cane with the tip broken off.

“A lot of them,” he answers, keeping his back to her as he hangs the next bunch. “Money was tight, growing up.”

“She did a good job,” Natasha offers, the words feeling empty.

Clint doesn’t say anything to that, just plunges his hand into the box yet again. This time he stops short, though, drops whatever he’s been holding and pulls away with a hiss of pain. Natasha moves back to his side immediately, cold adrenaline filling the pit of her stomach. His fingertip is bleeding, she sees, though it doesn’t look like more than a shallow cut. The anguish on his face is worse, though, almost unbearable to see. She feels an irrational rush of anger at the circumstances that have done this to him, the need to punch something to make this right.

“Fuck,” he growls, sticking his fingertip into his mouth to suck away the blood. “ _Fuck._ I--The last Christmas we had, Dad got drunk.” He laughs bitterly. “You know, like usual, only worse. Decided throwing all our ornaments at the wall would be a fun game. Mom must have--This was a terrible idea. I’m sorry.”

Natasha can’t manage anything but silence for a long moment, her reflexive thoughts of violence feeling suddenly like a terrible mistake.

“Come on,” she says finally, laying a hand on his shoulder and trying to steer him away from the tree, from the memories. “We should clean that cut.”

Clint turns and wraps his arms around her waist instead, pressing his face into her hair and holding on tightly.

* * *

Afterward, they go for a walk, because suddenly the walls of the house feel oppressive. It’s fully dark now, nothing but moonlight and the sky dotted with brilliant stars overhead. The thing Natasha notices most is the silence, this place utterly devoid of the background melody of urban life that’s woven its way around her like a second skin. Here everything feels cleaner, sharper, each moment standing out like the footprints they’re leaving in the fresh snow.

“You don’t really like Christmas, do you,” says Natasha, as Clint pauses just outside of the old barn.

He looks up at the jagged icicles that have formed along the slope of the roof’s edge. “I always want to. Always try.”

“But you can’t quite get there,” she says softly. That’s a feeling she knows well, the strange, melancholy longing for some of the simplest joys she’s never been able to experience.

Clint shakes his head. “No. And I didn’t--This year I didn’t have the energy to perform. Not for Tony. And everyone.”

“But it’s more than just that,” she prompts, because she can tell that he’s still holding back.

Clint sighs heavily, scuffing the toe of one boot aimlessly in the snow as he turns to face her. “S.H.I.E.L.D. felt like--It was a home, for me. And now it’s gone too. More shattered glass, right? You’d think I’d learn to quit loving things that are breakable.”

Natasha gives him a long, measured look, strangely relieved by that confession. They are more alike than she’s realized, a revelation that still manages to surprise her somehow.

“Wow,” she says finally, schooling her voice back into something approaching levity, “that’s almost poetic.”

Clint rolls his eyes, but she can see the corners of his lips tugging upward ever so slightly, some of the weight already lifted now that he’s said the words aloud.

“But you know,” she continues, “you _do_ have a home. In New York. And I don’t think you have to perform for anyone there. Not if you don’t want to. If I had to guess, I’d bet none of us exactly has a great holiday track record. You want some good memories? Then we’ll have to make them.”

He just blinks at her for a moment, then huffs a short laugh. “You going soft on me, Romanoff? You sound like a Hallmark card.”

“Hey,” she retorts, “running away at Christmas? That’s practically a Hallmark _movie_.”

Clint doesn’t react to that in words, bends down instead and scoops up a handful of snow. It catches Natasha just far enough off-guard; she doesn’t realize what he’s doing until he’s rolled it into a ball, which collides soundly with her chest.

Natasha gives him her best murderous glare, though underneath it she feels light, buoyant with happiness at the change in him already. “You know this means war, right?”

“Wouldn’t expect anything less,” says Clint, but he seems unconcerned, moving to crowd her back against a nearby tree.

Natasha looks up to meet his eyes in the darkness, sees in them that he will be all right, for now.

“Thank you,” he breathes against her ear, leaning in to kiss her with cold lips.

“Of course,” says Natasha, then delivers her best kick to the trunk of the tree.

Snow rains down from the branches onto his head, and in the stillness of the night it feels as though his laughter might reverberate for miles.


End file.
